In creating CNN, Ted Turner changed the way we saw the world | The Excerpt

On the Wednesday, May 13, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, passed away last week at the age of 87. His impact on cable TV and the news industry writ large will endure for generations to come. Michael Socolow, a media scholar and a professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine, joins The Excerpt to share his insights.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Media visionary Ted Turner introduced a radical new concept when he launched CNN back in 1980 — the 24-hour news cycle. The impact on the media industry was immediate and profound. Audiences ate it up. Suddenly 24/7 news was everywhere, giving news consumers a window into what was happening around the globe. Politics, entertainment, even more, as it happened, changing how we see the world forever.

Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 13th, 2026. Ted Turner passed away last week at the age of 87. His impact on cable TV and the news industry writ large will endure for generations to come. Here to help me dig into his life, what he built, I'm now joined by Michael Socolow, a media scholar and professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine. Michael, it's so good to see you.

Michael Socolow:

Good morning.

Dana Taylor:

When CNN first launched, there were a lot of detractors. Some even derided it as quote, "chicken noodle news" instead of the cable news network. That was nearly 50 years ago now. How radical of an idea was it? Why were so many people pessimistic about its success?

Michael Socolow:

Well, it was radical in that it was 24-hour television news, but we have to remember that there was the model of radio news. There was 24-hour radio news, which Ted Turner had used as a model or a format that would be transposed onto television. So it was radical in the idea of a 24-hour televisual news program that would be constantly running. But the idea of getting your news at any time of the day or night had been around for about 10 or 20 years.

Dana Taylor:

You recently published a piece for The Conversation about Ted Turner's impact on the news industry. You wrote that Ted Turner didn't just revolutionize news, he changed the way we see the world. How so?

Michael Socolow:

Yeah. We take it for granted today that when we look at our cell phones, our mobile phones, and without giving much thought about it, we can see Beirut, Mexico City, Tokyo, Moscow. Anywhere in the world we can get video and at any time of the day or night. And that kind of world, which we so take for granted and we don't really think that much about, was sort of impossible before CNN came along in 1980 and could take you anywhere in the world at any time of the day or night. So I really think Ted Turner's legacy is bigger than television. I think it's the way we think about video news from around the globe and it really made the world smaller in that sense.

Dana Taylor:

Michael, with regard to his new venture at CNN, Turner was famously quoted as saying, "The news will be the star." How much of a shift did this perspective bring to how news was presented?

Michael Socolow:

Well, a funny thing about "The news will be the star" at CNN, and I should say I did work at CNN, CNN's "The news will be the star" was always a joke within CNN as a way to keep the salaries low so you didn't have to pay the anchors and reporters as much as they were making at the big networks, but it was a conceptual idea that we've gotten away from. What Ted Turner really wanted was reporting from around the world. He opened up news bureaus all over the globe and he wanted real wire service, accurate, fast reporting. And today when you look at CNN, it's kind of sad, but we're 30 years away from when Ted Turner sold it. So he had no control over this. But when you look at CNN today, it's really a lot of punditry. It's a lot of people sitting around a table in New York City or Washington DC. That wasn't his vision for CNN at all.

Dana Taylor:

You wrote that dictators and terrorists learn to exploit CNN to get their message across to the American public. How do they do that?

Michael Socolow:

Well, there's a couple examples. So there's a very famous example of Fidel Castro inviting Ted Turner down to Cuba and charming him and then being on the program. And Ted Turner did get a lot of criticism for that one. But other examples would be when you realize that speaking to CNN was speaking both to the powerful American government, the American people and leaders around the world, people like Saddam Hussein would give Peter Arnett from CNN an interview in the run up to the first Gulf War and as well as in the second Iraq war in 2002. That's another example of a dictator using it. Putin has used CNN before. And of course, the most famous one is CNN got an interview in a cave with Osama bin Laden, got the last interview before 9/11. I want to be clear, these are incredible news scoops. The opportunity to interview these people would never have been turned down by other organizations, but there was also a sense that these dictators and terrorists and authoritarians were realizing that CNN were giving them this unfiltered platform to speak to the American people.

Dana Taylor:

Political division has surged in recent years just as trust in news has fallen off a cliff with many Americans now getting their news via streaming, social media. We've lost a cultural touchstone of a shared TV news experience. How much of an impact do you think that's had on the public's trust and how much of this phenomenon feeding conspiracy theories like the one that President Donald Trump in fact won the 2020 election? What's the impact there?

Michael Socolow:

Yeah. It's really, really difficult. And what is difficult is we have this huge amount of news organizations or things that are masquerading as news organizations pretending to give out accurate and verified facts when they're actually bots being run by the internet research agency in Russia or by the Saudi government or the Egyptian government or the Indian government. They're all over the world and they're making up lies and they're passing it along. I mean, this is a problem much bigger than the election denial of 2020 at this point. This is people circulating and spreading false, provably inaccurate information. It's not even information, provably inaccurate misinformation that has origins in countries around the world.

It's a real serious problem that we don't have a solution to yet. And you're right. There used to be the old saying that everybody is entitled to an opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts. But the problem is in today's world, we don't have that shared basis of factual reality from which we can really have debate and discussion that's so essential to a functioning democracy.

Dana Taylor:

What I'm about to say could easily have been said by other generations of journalists as well. So you'll have to indulge me, but the news ecosystem faces daunting challenges today with regard to monetization as well as how to reach and build an audience. As more and more consumers cut the cord, turn to streaming services or social media to get their news, how can the TV news industry survive?

Michael Socolow:

Well, one thing it's interesting that you say, how can the TV news industry survive? Because the TV news industry is actually making good money. I want to be clear about that. Your local TV news station is still the number one source of news for Americans. And these large corporations like TEGNA and Nexstar, which is purchasing TEGNA and combining, they make billions of dollars in profits a year. A TV show like ABC World News Tonight makes at least $400 million a year in advertising. 60 Minutes is still a top 10 evening news program. So these shows are very healthy relative to a lot of other media. I just want to be really clear about that.

But you're right, in the future they're going to have to move because where advertising is going, where eyeballs are going and where attention is going, they're going to have to figure out new ways to reach audiences. I don't know whether it's TikTok, I don't know whether it's social media. I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work or subscription models, but yes, TV is entering its last phase now as we used to know it.

Dana Taylor:

A lot of media analysts are pointing to the surge in independent journalism as a phenomenon that's been transformative to news consumption. You don't necessarily need a CBS camera crew to do a video segment anymore. All you need to do is pull out your smartphone, but this opens up a new can of worms. Without a standards department with fact checkers and editors, who's doing the work of verifying that stories are accurate?

Michael Socolow:

I agree. And that is the Substack model or the podcasting model. Look at the amount of money that Joe Rogan signed his contract for. It's enormous, but you're not building the infrastructure of editorial judgment and discernment that a lot of these organizations, back when they had a lot more money, were hiring people to do. And it's a great question. The key is going to be figuring out...

I really believe that in the end, and I'm not sure if it's going to happen, it's really going to be up to the media literacy of the audience to understanding where you get your news and how your news got there and being critical about your own sources of news. And thinking about what am I not being told? What am I being told? How do I know whether this is true? Is the source named or is it anonymous? Is there possibly a conflict of interest between this reporter and the story they're telling? All these kind of things we need to develop a more discerning audience. I'm not sure if it'll work, but they really should put media literacy into K-12 education as part of democracy, as part of understanding democracy. I don't know if they will. It's past due, but I think that's really the number one thing that needs to be done.

Dana Taylor:

Michael, as part of its deal to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount will soon take ownership of CNN. If David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, were to call you up tomorrow and ask for your advice, what would you tell him? What should he do with CNN?

Michael Socolow:

Well, it's kind of funny. David Ellison is not going to call an academic for advice. David Ellison isn't even going to call some of the consultants he should call for advice because the truth is CBS news, I want to be clear here, I don't want to talk about the CBS corporation that actually operates the network, which is much bigger, CBS News, which is a division of CBS and CNN are rounding errors. I mean, the amount of money they cost and they produce within the Paramount Skydance and Warner Brothers Discovery universe is very small.

And so David Ellison, what I would tell David Ellison is look at the very big parts of your corporation of which CBS News and CNN are going to be a small parts of. What is the future of streaming? Figure out the future of streaming, figure out the future of distribution modes, figure out the future of subscriptions, those kind of things. And please leave the journalistic and editorial judgment to the professionals, to the people who've been educated in it, to the people who've had a long experience with it, to the people who will keep you out of the kind of libel lawsuits we saw. I mean, if you remember the Dominion voting lawsuit involving Fox News. There is a lot of money to be saved when you employ ethical and professional journalists. I think I stumbled across it. That is what I would tell David Ellison. "You can save a ton of money. Nobody will sue you like Fox News got sued and Newsmax got sued in the Dominion lawsuit if you hire professional and ethical journalist." That's what I would probably tell them.

Dana Taylor:

I hope your phone rings. Michael, thank you so much for joining me on The Excerpt.

Michael Socolow:

Thank you. Have a great day.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Subscribe and make The Excerpt part of your weekday routine. New episodes are available every morning.